This Ones Different

*Jack POV*

I feel like I know him… But I don’t at the same time.When I look at him, my heart startsbeating faster… But I can barely remember his name, let alone anything about him.

Who IS he? He says he’s my best friends… But why wouldn’t I remember him? He says I hate him and he broke my heart… But I don’t hate him, because I don't KNOW him, and my heart doesn’t feel broken. I don’t really feel anything, actually. I still feel like I’m trapped inside myself, barely breathing but hanging on for dear life.

The place that I’ve been for the past month was horrible. It was empty and there seemed like no way out… It was nowhere. It was just a place inside my head where nothing existed except memories… And I guess I misplaced some of them.

You know how people say before they die theirwhole lifeflashes before their eyes? Well, that happened to me in a way. But I wasn’t alive or dead… I was just there, watching my whole life on replay in my mind and I witnessed things in a totally different way, having the power ofhindsight.

But Alex? I don’t remember seeing him in the flashback at all... How could I just lose all recollection of someone who was apparently such a huge part of my life? It makes no sense.

I need to know more about this Alex guy.

All of sudden, the door to my room creaked open, interrupting my trail of thoughts and confusion. I turned my head automatically and my eyes fell on a familiar-looking face at last.

“Rian!” I exclaimed happily, beaming at him as he stood in the doorway.

He smiled widely and I could see in his eyes that he was getting a little emotional. I guessed he'd kind of missed me, huh?

“Jack!” He ran over and threw his arms around me, and this hug didn't feel as weird as my last, because I knew exactly who Rian was.My best friend.

“Oh my God, I’ve missed you so much! How do you feel? Are you alright?” Rian fretted frantically, squeezing me hard.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Just have a bitch of a headache!” I half-shrugged and half-groaned, pulling back from the hug and rubbing my throbbing temple.

I literally felt like I had just been stood in the corner of a room banging my head against a wall for a whole month of my life…

“I’m not surprised, man; your head has been through a lot this past month!” Rian replied, touching my arm affectionately. He was sat on the edge of my bed, as close as he could possibly get without sitting on my lap, and just staring at me with tears ofhappinessin his eyes. “I better go and inform Katie that you’re awake.”

He started to stand up, but I grabbed hold of his hand on my arm, making him freeze.

“First you can tell me what the deal with this Alex guy is,” I spoke insistently, looking at Rian with genuine curiosity.

I want some real answers! I think it’s more likely that my headache is a result of me being so fucking confused about some guy that I should know, rather than some little bump I endured…

“Oh yeah… I was going to ask you about Alex,” Rian remembered, sinking back down on the bed. “Do you seriously not remember him?”

“Yeah, Iseriouslydon’t... Jesus, as if I would joke about this. He called me a liar, but I swear I’m not!” I protested defensively, insulted by the accusation.

I don’t see why he thinks I would lie about it. If I was really his best friend then lying about this wouldn’t be very loyal of me, would it?

“Well, he has issues with liars. He’s constantly paranoid that people are lying to him, so I wouldn’t take it personally… And I mean - thisispretty hard to believe.” Rian drifted off into what seemed like a deep trail of thoughts, zoning out for a moment.

I watched him patiently, waiting for him to snap out of it and letting silence completely absorb the two of us. I debated with myself how to phrase my next question, before concluding that there was no way to say it without seeming just a bit insane.

Eventually, I sighed and gave up waiting for Rian to break out of his trance and just broke him out of it myself.

“How did Alex break my heart?” I demanded bluntly. “Am I supposed to hate him?”

See? I sound insane. I’m asking someone else about my so-called broken heart, when surely I should be the only one that can say how it’s broken. But as far as I can feel, it’s not broken... It’s just beating.

And whatnormal personasks someone else if they’re supposed to hate a person? These are things you have to decide for yourself!

Rian looked a little caught off-guard by my question. I figured that he either didn’t know anything about it or he knew too much and he wasn’t comfortable explaining it to me.

“I... uh, don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied slowly, his eyes flickering in every direction shiftily.

I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously.

“You’ve always been an awful liar, Ri,” I told him flatly. “It is what Alex told me… And I just want to know if he’s crazy or if we really did fall out or something.”

It’s a reasonable request that requires a straightforward enough answer: “he’s insane” or “you fell out” (and possibly further extensive questioning after that).

“I don’t feel comfortable talking to you about this... I'm sorry, but it’s probably best that you can’t remember,” he mumbled quickly, starting to stand up again.

It’sbestthat I don’t remember…?

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded, grabbing his arm again to try and pull him back.

“Sorry, Jack… Just try not to think about it… Forget Alex ever said anything,” Rian sighed, stepping out of my reach so my hand fell from his arm.

He's got to be kidding me! I know my memory is bad, but how can I just forget that? I’m clearly missing a vital part of my life and Rian won’t fucking help me remember.

“But it’s going to annoy me now!” I whined. “Why won’t you tell me?”

I deserve to know what the fuck has happened in my life!

“Because it’s not my place to… It’s Alex’s,” he replied, looking at me apologetically.

I felt betrayed that my best friend refused to tell me the truth. I scowled at him and turned away from his sorry face, averting my gaze out the window.

“Oh, Jack, don’t be like this… I’m sorry, but some things are just better left unsaid and forgotten about,” he continued regretfully.

Not when it’s my life we’re talking about! I am entitled to know the full story left untold.

“Yeah, well, if you were in my position, I would tell you whatever you wanted to know about your own fucking life,” I retorted grumpily, folding my arms.

Rian sighed and I heard his footsteps start to fade away as he walked towards the door, but I didn’t break my fixated gaze on the window to look at him.

“And if you were in my position, you would want to protect your Friends from getting hurt… which is exactly what I’m doing,” he murmured vaguely.

What?This is getting more confusing by the second! How would the truth hurt?

This made me turn my head sharply back in Rian’s direction, causing my eyes to immediately lock with his.

“I don’t need your fucking protection!” I snapped, raising my voice in frustration. “I just want a damn clue as to why the memory of my so-called best friend has been wiped completely!”

Whatever Rian is refusing to tell me must be quite bad… It might even be significant enough to be the reason why I don’t remember Alex at all… I need to understand what’s going on here!

“Okay, yes, you fell out. But please… Just let it stay in the past. It’s better left forgotten now,” Rian pleaded weakly, dropping his eyes to the floor to avoid my glare.

Clearly, Rian happy that I’ve lost my memory… That makes me fucking paranoid that something awful happened. I swear it must be the reason why I don’t remember Alex. And I do not intend to drop the subject; I fully intend to remember everything about my past.

I didn’t reply to Rian’s plea. I was too frustrated that I was past the point of arguing. I just wanted Rian to go now… I wanted to be left alone with my thoughts and lack of memory.

“I’m going to tell the nurses you’re awake… Okay?” Rian mumbled, as he walked out the door, deserting me; he’d clearly had enough of arguing with me too.

I will find out the truth, whether it’s supposed to stay untold or not. I can’t live like this, with a massive piece of my life missing… Nothing makes sense.

*Alex POV*

Sitting alone in the hospital waiting room, I was being haunted by my thoughts of Jack and desperate urge to run back into his room and throw my arms around him again. I wanted him to know who I am… Wanted to hear him say he loves and forgives me… I wantedhim.

Then, all of a sudden, the door to the waiting room swung open and Rian walked in, invading my state of solitude.

“You’re an idiot,” he stated flatly, his voice echoing around the empty room.

My eyebrows pulled together as I stared at him standing in the doorway.

“Oh, way to kick me when I'm already down," I muttered.

Seriously though, what have I done now? I’ll add it to the long list of stupid things I’ve done in my life.

“You told Jack that you broke his heart and that he hates you!” he hissed in a low voice, as if he was paranoid someone was listening, even though we were the only ones around.

“Uh…” I hesitated, trying to remember exactly what I said. “Oh, yeah… well, it’s true,” I mumbled with a small shrug, failing to see the big problem that was getting Rian’s knickers in a twist.

He glowered at me with a look on his face that showed that he was waiting for me to realize the full extent of the damage I had caused. But I remained oblivious to it.

“Well, he still doesn’t have a fucking clue who you are, he just knows what you told him and he wants to knowmore, about how you apparently broke his heart… He wants to know what happened between the two of you!” he exploded, giving up keeping his voice down.

Something finally clicked into place in brain at these words and I could no longer pretend I hadn't just dug my own fucking grave. Shit, I had intrigued Jack and now he was searching for the unforgivable truth that I didn’t ever want him to find...

Seriously, why do I not think before I open my big mouth?

“Oh God... You didn’t tell him, did you?” I gasped, feeling the colour drain from my face.

“No, I’m not a fucking moron!” Rian snapped, firing up again. “What do you think I would say? Oh, by the way, Alex is the reason why you were in a coma?”

I flinched dramatically and my heart stopped for a second upon hearing the harsh words fall from his lips so suddenly like that. He said it in such a casual manner that completely contradicted his true feelings about what I had done and it caught me off-guard. There was no way I could hide from the truth when it was spoken that bluntly.

“Use your fucking brain, Alex. If I just came out and said that now, when he has no memory of you or any feelings towards you, I hardly think he’d want to be around you ever again,” Rian continued to speak in the same blunt way that my heart couldn’t handle very well.

But he’s right; Jack would hate me forever… which is why he must never know what I did to him.

I suddenly felt too ashamed to hold my friends piercing gaze anymore, so I dropped my resentful eyes to the floor.

“Yeah, cheers for that,” I murmured sarcastically in response to his blunt and brutal honesty, which I wasn’t really prepared for in my fragile state.

“I’m just saying it like it is. You’re going to have to face up to the truth and your mistakes one day, Alex,” Rian told me flatly.

What is he talking about? I ‘face up to the truth’ every single day of my life. It’s not like I pretend I never made Jack try to commit or I try to block out the past. I know exactly what I did to him and I never fucking stop thinking about it. And I know that Jack would hate me if he actually remembered who the hell I am.

I’m not in denial about the truth. I would just rather someone else didn’t throw it in my face so bluntly like that. It cuts like a knife.

“Are you saying that I should face up to the past by telling Jack the truth?” I asked, frowning to myself and still looking down at my feet.

Rian seemed to be contradicting himself and it was confusing the shit out of me.

Confronting the problem and revealing everything to Jack would definitely be classified as ‘facing up to the truth’… But is it really a wise thing to do?

“No, you can’t do that,” Rian retorted in horror, making me lift my gaze slightly to look at him, alarmed by the urgency in his voice.

I just stared at him blankly, watching him shake his head vigorously.

Will you make up your fucking mind please?

“He can’t remember anything about you. None of the good times the two of you have had… No feelings that he had for you… So, if you just tell him what you did now he will only know one thing about you and it will completely destroy his perception of you!” he continued, spelling the problem out for me so it was crystal clear in my lost, hazy mind.

“Oh,” I made a small choked sound to indicate my understanding, but I was at a loss for what else to say.

Fortunately (or not) for me, Rian still had quite a lot to rant about.

“What I’m saying is, you need to accept that you made a mistake and move on with your life. Everyone makes mistakes, Lex. You can’t keep obsessing over it. What’s done is done. You’re never gonna change the past. You need to concentrate on the future now,” he rambled insightfully.

Rian is always one for good advice… But in this case, he doesn’t really know what the fuck he’s talking about.

“Not everyone makes mistakes as fucked up and unforgivable as this though, do they? You don’t understand how hard it is for me to just accept it. How can I accept the fact that I completely fucking broke my best friend like that?” I demanded, getting choked up as the tears stung my eyes. “I totally destroyed his trust in me and his innocence, just, everything. He was weak and b-broken, and I can still hear his pleading voice in my head, but I- I didn’t stop… I was fucking out of control! I just held him there-”

“Alex, for fuck sake, stop talking about it!” Rian shouted, making me fall silent and look up suddenly to see for the first time the tears in his eyes and the repulsed look on his face.

I knew I had said too much that he didn’t want to hear, but it wasn’t like I was shouting my mouth off in a shameless manner… The regret and remorse was distinctive in my voice.

“You’re the one who wanted me to face up to the truth,” I whispered in a shaky voice, not bothering to wipe away the tears that were streaming down my face. They seemed endless so there was not much point.

“Well, I don’t need you to fucking paint the picture in my head!” he yelled in a strangled voice. “I’m trying to understand, but it’s hard to get my head around. I can see that it’s tearing you apart, but you still have to try and get over it now. How else are you going to move on with your life? How do you expect Jack to forgive you and not hate you if you can’t even forgive yourself?” he continued frantically.

“I don’t expect Jack to forgive me, and I will never forgive myself either. You have no idea how much I hate myself for what I did,” I spoke in an uneven voice, breathing deeply and trying desperately to regain composure.

“Alex, I know you hate yourself for what you did, but youneedto try and get your shit together now - you have a second chance to do things right with Jack here… You can start over with him now,” Rian replied, and I identified the glimmer of hope in his voice.

I looked up, and in his eyes, I saw the wider picture and realized that he was secretly happy Jack couldn’t remember me, because it meant there was hope for us again. It suddenly hit me that maybe it literally was for the best that Jack didn’t remember me. If he could, I’m pretty sure we would be in jeopardy.

But how do I even start over with Jack? We have too much history… Even if he can’t remember it, I can.

“How the fuck am I going to look Jack in the eye every day and act like nothing is wrong? How can I act like I don’t love him and hide the guilt and shame?” I questioned erratically, seriously looking for answers, because wearing a permanent mask around Frank seemed like an impossible option. “It will never be the same between us because I’m just going to be fucking pretending to be someone I’m not the whole time I’m with him… I’ll be living a fuckinglie!”

Even after everything that’s happened, we’re all still full of fucking lies.

“Would you rather live the truth then and risk Jack not wanting anything to do with you?” Rian asked flatly.

I don’t want to live the truth or a lie. I don’t want to live without Jack! He wouldn’t like me if he knew the truth, but he wouldn’t like me lying to him either! Either way I am going to lose in this situation.

“I just want him to remember me as his best friend and the one that he fell in love with, but not as the one that hurt him,“ I sighed sadly.

I knew I was thinking too wishfully. There’s no way Jack could remember only the good times we had and nothing else… He would either remember everything about me or nothing at all.

“Memories don’t lie, Alex. He could never remember you as someone you weren’t,” Rian spoke realistically, trying to stop me from blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. “You were more than his friend and of course you hurt him… But love always hurts. You just have to find the people that are worth suffering for.”

Well, to me, Jack is worth suffering for. But I’m not worth his suffering… He deserves better than me.

“Jack knew the risks when you and him started getting too close… He knew he would most likely get hurt, Hell I’m the one who told him, but he didn’t give up on you,” Rian added.

I doubt he ‘knew the risk’ that I was going to abuse him though...

“He gave up on me quite a few times,” I disagreed abruptly, remembering how Jack told me he was done with me and my bullshit one day … The afternoon of the day I got back together with Lisa

“Well, it never lasted long, did it?” Rian shot back, making me remember what happened later that same day, when Jack came and found me just before I walked into Lisa’s house and fucking begged me not to go through the door… He said the words“She will only hurt you, all she ever does is hurt you”…but I didn’t listen. I was so blind and ignorant to his love; I took it for granted.

“He didn’t give up on you all those times you drank yourself into an unconscious state… He was always there for you. Fucking hell, Alex, you even came after him and stopped him from killing himself the night he said he hated you…That is love,” Rian carried on talking negligently, even though he was quickly making me fall apart again.

What is he even reminding me about all of this for? Is he trying to show me what I had and have now lost? Trying to make the fact that Jack has no idea who I am anymore even more unbearable?

“He loved me more than I ever deserved,” I spoke numbly, running my fingers through my hair.

Maybe Jack never gave up on me, but he gave up on himself. Over time he just gradually seemed to stop caring about himself. He got into the habit of drinking heavily way too much, and I didn’t see him for weeks at a time… No one did. I don’t think he ever even left his house. And it was all my fault…. It was plain to see that I broke his heart.

“You know what?” I broke the temporary silence suddenly in a bold voice that didn’t sound like it belonged to me. “I’m glad that he doesn’t remember me. It means he doesn’t have to live with all the heartache and haunting memories that I will always have to live with. He deserves to be happy and he finally can be now.”


“I think it’s for the best. You could become the good friends you used to be over time. And once he gets to know you again, he might even fall back in love with you… He obviously fell for you the first time, so you could probably win him over again,” Rian told me, and I knew he was just trying to give me hope for the future. Something to live for.

“Yeah, but there’s just one problem with your imaginary fairytale… I will never be able to be myself around Jack again, knowing what I did to him. I will feel too fucking ashamed every time I see him,” I muttered, crushing Rian’s and my own illusion of hope.

“Well, you need to try and forget the past now, if you want him to be in your life,” Rian retorted with a long sigh.

I sighed too.

“I’ll try.”

It’s just so hard for me to let go.

Despite my declaration that I would try to move on from the past I was secretly listening to the voice inside my head that was calling me a failure.

Notes

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